In order to facilitate the utility of unloading and loading of truck beds or bodies, tailgates have become ubiquitous in the art for their numerous advantages over a fixed rear bed or body wall (the terms truck bed and truck body being used interchangeably through this specification, for the purposes of describing various non-limiting embodiments of the subject invention). In this regard, a typical tailgate acts as a substitute for the rear bed or body wall and may be pivoted open (or raised vertically without pivoting) so as to facilitate entry and egress into the carrying or storage portions of a truck bed or body as well as to facilitate unloading of material from such a bed or body when employed on a dump truck, for example (which can typically be raised or tilted so that material being transported exits the rear of the truck body via gravity).
At least three different tailgate types have become commonplace in the art. For example, the tailgate illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,989,918 (FIG. 4) is a so-called metering type which can be lifted vertically to various heights, without pivoting, so that the exit rate of material being dumped from a vehicle can be controlled via the size of the opening at the rearward most portion of the dump bed created by the vertical height of the tailgate (e.g., the higher the tailgate is vertically raised, without pivoting, the larger the opening created and the faster the dump rate). In U.S. Pat. No. 3,869,168 (FIG. 1), a high lift-type tailgate is described which is a modification of a conventional pivot-type tailgate illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 2,246,358. A high-lift tailgate is an improvement over a conventional pivot-type tailgate in the sense that, if a truck is carrying or transporting large debris, for example, a relatively large opening at the rear of the vehicle bed or body can be obtained (so that the material can be “dumped” free of obstruction by the tailgate) by simultaneously raising the tailgate vertically and pivoting it out of the exit path (e.g., with a hydraulic cylinder).
Although the above-described prior art tailgates often work well for their limited, intended purposes, such designs, known prior to the herein described invention, have one or more inefficiencies and/or drawbacks (or problems) associated with their use. In view of such inefficiencies and/or drawbacks and/or problems, it is apparent that there exists a need in the art for a tailgate which addresses, overcomes, mitigates, and/or solves one or more of such problems and/or drawbacks and/or inefficiencies in the art. It is a purpose of this invention to fulfill this and/or other needs in the art which will become more apparent to the skilled artisan once given the following disclosure.